The Making of An Opposition

...And there is every likelihood that the commentators will be proven right, for Giscard and Lecanuet differ on little but their tactical approach toward the Gaullist phenomenon...

...Mendes-France is considered the only political figure who may be able to work out a political and economic program that the entire Left, including the Communists, can endorse...

...Outside the Paris citadel, the country is already predominantly anti-Gaullist...

...forecast a sizable Gaullist victory...

...More important roles will probably be assumed by Louis Joxe, Edgar Faure and Ambassador Georges Gorse, a former Socialist...

...In Annemasse, for instance, Gaullist candidate Maurice Herzog won a seat with 25,000 votes against a Mitterand man (23,000) and a Lecanuet man (6,700), thus the majority of votes simply fell under the table...

...Indeed, it is only because of France's peculiar election system that the regime managed to hang on to a tenuous majority in the new Assembly...

...Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville was beaten in the 7th district of Paris by Frederic-Dupont, a veteran dispenser of patronage known as "Vami des concierges...

...Despite—or perhaps because of—his make-up, he looked aged, tired and pasty-faced, and while many Frenchmen admire him as a historical figure, they were struck by the visual evidence that he represented the past rather than the future...

...For him, France can prosper only if his regime stays in power forever, even after his own departure...

...They continue to doubt that the Communists are really prepared to play the democratic game without mental reservations...

...Many observers believe that Giscard, from here on, will play a role inside the majority similar to the one Robert Kennedy plays with respect to President Johnson...

...The undeniable economic progress since 1958 has been spotty, touching only certain geographical areas and certain branches of industry...

...All those who have been elected deputy, have to name a substitute, who will have no voting right during the first four weeks of the new Assembly...

...According to the French Constitution, members of the government cannot sit as deputies...

...They are looking forward to 1972, when the first postwar generations will go to the ballots to elect at the same time a new Parliament and a new President...

...In fact, Giscard d'Estaing has already indicated that he will use his new strength inside the Gaullist coalition to try to influence the General's policies concerning such matters as Britain's admission to the Common Market, the dollar-gold controversy and French relations with the United States...

...What were the deeper causes for this electoral upheaval which, among other things, ruined the reputation of the two leading French Public Opinion Institutes whose computers, up to the eve of election day...

...In the eyes of most French observers outside the Gaullist ranks, the situation looks quite different...

...It is not yet sure whether this opportunity will be seized...

...By voting anti-Gaullist, many citizens simply gave vent to their discontent that so little of the good life has filtered down to their personal level...

...Seasoned veterans of this sort of in-fighting such as Guy Mollet, Gaston Defferre and Maurice Faure simply scoff at the idea that they could be outmaneuvered by their Communist partners...

...First, the French people have suddenly woken up to the fact that they are living in a thoroughly old-fashioned country...

...As Pierre Mendes-France was quick to point out the day after the elections, 57 per cent of all votes were cast against the Gaullist candidates...

...General de Gaulle has lost his old magic on tv...

...Some optimists see Mendes at the head of one big French Labor party that will eventually absorb the Communists...

...In that sense, tv, which de Gaulle always considered one of his best weapons, has boomeranged on him...

...Pleven expressed not only the view of the Jean Lecanuet group but also that of many Socialists and other members of the Mitterand Federation...

...The new group was finally formed—but without Giscard's contingent...

...Not until the last week of the campaign did he suddenly reverse steam by starting to denounce the Red danger "to our Republic and our freedoms," and by then people were no longer listening to him...

...By that time de Gaulle will be 81 and, if he is still around, they predict that the French people will send him into a well-deserved retirement at Colombey-les-Deux-Eg-lises...

...He practically ruled out the possibility of an alternative political grouping one day relieving the Gaullists, the way such things happen in democracies like Britain or the United States...

...General de Gaulle will have to do more than simply "faire du social" to consolidate his majority...

...Above all, his critics say, he will have to re-examine his stand on Europe, Britain's entry into the Common Market and France's non-participation in atomic disarmament talks...

...Thus he had rendered the Communists perfectly acceptable citizens in the eyes of the masses, and had created a psychological climate for removing the average Frenchman's mental blocks against a political alliance with the Communist party...

...For in spite of this major effort, three top-ranking exponents of Gaullist policy went down in defeat...

...As to his acolytes, only Premier Georges Pompidou succeeded in displaying enough robust charm of his own to arouse popular sympathy...

...What saved the regime from disaster for the present was the capital of France, where the Gaullists used to hold all 31 seats and managed to keep 21...

...Three main reasons are generally cited for the setback...

...At the age of 41, Giscard thereby becomes the authentic champion of modern conservatism in France...

...Couve has already offered his resignation, which de Gaulle has so far refused to accept...

...They will have to act fast, for the trade unions, encouraged by the election results, are girding for a series of strikes and tests of strength that may lead to a new wave of social unrest in the country...

...One merely has to leave the Paris showplace for certain provinces, notably in the Center, South and Southwest, to discover that they have remained on the technological level of 1925...

...De Gaulle practically pushed the non-Communist French Left into the arms of the Communists...

...That makes for a lot of "local color" and picturesque sites, which may enchant the foreign tourists, but it does not particularly elate the people who have to live there all year round without the kind of comfort almost every Swiss, Belgian, Dutch or German takes for granted nowadays...

...Veterans Affairs Minister Alexandre Sangui-netti, one of the stalwarts of the Gaullist party apparatus, lost his seat in Paris to a Mitterand supporter...

...But other Paris experts remain a good deal more cautious...

...The tv image of the others—be it Michel Debre, Messmer, or Couve de Murville—was rated by experts a few degrees below that of Richard Nixon...

...The Prague putsch of 1948 remains vivid in their minds...

...The motto in the Paris Elysee Palace remains "Business as usual...

...Their main task will be to push a more vigorous social reform program in all domains...

...Meeting his ministers for the first time after the March 12 election setback, the General told them "their melancholy was unjustified" and they must now go on with him toward new achievements...

...The setback for the regime is all the graver in the light of the money invested in the nationwide election campaign and the massive radio and television effort permitted...

...They feel their position has been further strengthened by the comeback of Pierre Mendes-France...

...If a new Popular Front ever came to power, they could be expected to block further free elections once and for all...

...To date, there are no indications that he plans to make any hasty concessions in these fields, but it may no longer matter very much what he does or does not do...

...Millions of voters in those regions still see themselves constrained to living old-fashioned lives on petty salaries in petty old-fashioned surroundings...

...He steadfastly refused to deprive his 44 deputies of their separate political identity in the Assembly...

...For many months, the General had gone out of his way to socialize with Communists...

...Apart from these technical deficiencies, the Gaullist setback was largely self-inflicted...

...They believe that France, in the long run, can remain a member of the free world only through a large vote-getting coalition between Centrists and Socialists corresponding to the situation in other West European countries...

...Countless television programs have widened their horizons and opened their eyes to what they are missing...

...Premier Pompidou, who got himself brilliantly elected in the first round, is expected to remain in office at least for the time being...

...While the unr lost 40 seats, its coalition partner, the Independent Republicans, gained 9 seats under the leadership of former Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing...

...The leaders of the non-Communist Left no longer fear that they might lose control of the situation...

...The Communists are not in the habit of relinquishing power once conquered," said former Premier Rene Pleven...

...Defense Minister Pierre Messmer, promoter of the French Atomic Striking Force, was defeated in Brittany...

...Many prominent figures in the Gaullist camp have no desire to write finis to their political careers in 1972," wrote the Paris newspaper Le Monde...

...Most French Leftists seem to be pleased with the fact that the Communists have come out of their ghetto and now show a readiness to be integrated into the nation's political life...

...FRANCE LOOKS TO THE FUTURE The Making of an Opposition By George W. Herald Paris The Ides of March have not been propitious for Charles de Gaulle, but he does not seem to have noticed anything special...

...Although the opposition had shown a surprising degree of unity at the polls, he repeated that it would never be able to govern and could only "destroy...

...Hereafter, they say, Gaullism is bound to go into a decline paralleling that of the General's own life...

...They will start looking for fresh contacts, new points to fall back on, and thus France will slowly but surely turn a page of its history...

...At the same time, the French know very well what modern living can be like, for there is one object most families possess—a television set...

...Any prospects that the Fifth Republic will survive its founder have now become to them utterly remote...

...He spoke twice during the election campaign, and both times he sat slumped in his chair behind a huge Louis XV desk, with only his head and chest visable...

...Since March 12, the wine growers in the South and factory workers in Lyon, Besancon and St...

...The pact between Francois Mitterand and Communist party chief Waldeck Rochet was honored by the voters in both camps with a rigid and widely unexpected discipline...

...De Gaulle had overplayed his game...

...He pledged his support to de Gaulle, but it will not be unconditional...

...Giscard's brother Olivier is one of the administrators of ibm in France, and his whole family is extremely prominent and influential in Paris...

...Secondly...

...Thus the regime will be deprived for one month of about 20 votes, which will give the opposition an opportunity to topple the new Cabinet by a censure motion...

...who not only achieved a personal triumph in Grenoble but whose prestige swept five out of seven Leftist candidates in his district to victory...

...Since the same thing happened in many other districts where the opposition failed to join forces, the new Assembly does not even come near to reflecting the true extent of anti-Gaullist sentiment in France...

...French commentators like Alfred Fabre-Luce anticipate that his men in Parliament will find themselves in agreement with the 30 deputies of Lecanuet's Democ-cratic Center on many issues...

...It is true that Giscard stands more to the right, but he has a cosmopolitan and wide-open outlook...

...He had made a trip through Russia, lavished French hospitality on Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, and wined and dined one East European government head after the other...

...But the other two ministers and Jean Char-bonnel, Under Secretary for Overseas Cooperation, who was also defeated, are due to be dropped from the next Cabinet...

...To cope with the new trends in France, General de Gaulle is expected to anchor his next government somewhat more to the left...

...For the near future, the most significant shift of votes took place inside the Gaullist (unr) establishment...

...They affirm that the General's edifice has started crumbling not only George W. Herald, a previous contributor here, is a veteran foreign correspondent based in Paris...

...Immediately after March 12, Premier Pompidou tried to persuade Giscard to merge his troops with those of the unr in a new Parliamentary grouping called "Action Group of the Fifth Republic...

...Nazaire have already engaged in protest actions that took a violent form and produced a number of clashes with the police...

...through outward pressure but also from within...

...Even many of those who rejoiced at the Gaullist decline—view the new constellation with mixed feelings...

...The end of a reign is often sad...

...At any rate...

...The traditional extreme Right—"la Droite Stupide"—has been virtually eliminated by the defeats of Jacques Soustelle and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vig-nancour...